Well is is that time of year again! I know that even if you love Christmas it is a busy time of year when we all go crazy trying to get it all done in a timely manner. Personally I have tried to keep it simple. I have only a small family gathering, because we have the shop where we are so integral to everybody having the best Christmas dinner ever ;) ~ and so for us smaller is better. I know that people have a bunch of questions when it comes to turkey . How big, fresh or frozen, how long to cook and should I stuff it. Well I will tell you what I like to do. If I am making a turkey then I like to have a bit bigger because if I am going to go to all the work of preparing one I want to make sure I have enough for two meals. So my rule of thumb is one and a half pounds to two pounds per person. And please remember that turkeys were ment to be bigger animals, not small. So the smaller the bird the more bone to meat ratio you have, the bigger the bird (over 14 lbs) the more meat to bone ratio you have. So lets say you have 6 people. I would go with a 12lb bird. If I have 10 people I would go with a 15-18 lb bird. I want left overs! Keep in mind who your eaters are as well. I've got a couple young men in the family who can eat a bunch more than my young ladies and myself.So get your orders in for your fresh birds - Yes I do like fresh better. Once you've done fresh it is very hard to go back to a frozen bird. Why fresh you ask? Mostly because you do not know how long that bird has been frozen for. Randy worked in the grocery industry in his early meat cutting career and he said the birds would sometimes be almost 2 years frozen.... you know why they are on sale! So like I said - order today!! It is amazing how quickly it sneaks up on us and you don't want to miss out on our lovely fresh, free run turkeys. I will go into the cooking of it next round. ​Because ~ Christmas is coming!!